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What to do with a data terminal

Right, coax / BNC cabling is 'generally' for thinnet, or 10Base2.

But the Wang VS Terminal is circa 1978 -- much earlier than when IEEE published the 802.3a standard:

The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) released the official Ethernet standard in 1983 called the IEEE 802.3 after the name of the working group responsible for its development, and in 1985 version 2 (IEEE 802.3a) was released. This second version is commonly known as 'Thin Ethernet' or 10Base2 ... See, The History of Cabling, <http://www.datacottage.com/nch/cablinghist.htm>​



So I'm am super confused about what these coax connectors on the back of the Wang are for ...
 
Why would Wang (or IBM) terminals have anything to do with IEEE ethernet standards? SNA, for example, dates back to 1974. ARCNet dates back to 1977.

Wang had its own version--ISTR that Wang terminals were block-mode also.
 
So hypothetically, if one had a WANG VS Terminal -- you couldn't really do anything with it unless you had a Wang VS 100 Minicomputer lying around, right?

Televideo terminals seem like the right way to go, with the RS-232 standard.
 
Pretty much, unless you wanted to reverse-engineer things (i.e. develop your own server interface that imitated the VS one) or modify the terminal (probably just as hard). You do know what I mean by a "block" terminal, don't you?

Believe it or not, Televideo used RS-422 at one time.
 
Ole Juul said:
I can't answer directly about the Wang interface, but the coax connectors were generally used for thinnet, which is ethernet through coax. There's lots of old ethernet cards with that connector so it should be easy to set up a Linux box with that. The cabling was 70 ohm (like video) so readily available.
Click to expand...
Hate to argue with ya, Ole, but...

Thinnet Ethernet coax (10base2) has an impedance of 50 ohms, e.g. RG8, RG58.

Cable TV, video, etc. normally uses 75 (not 70) ohm cable, e.g. RG6, RG59.

There are 'terminals' that connect via ethernet but they're really all-in-one thin clients and generally use twisted pair CAT5 10/100baseT cable.

'Normal' terminals used RS-232/422/485 serial over more or less ordinary multi-conductor cable. Other than special video input or output, any terminals that used a 'coax' type of cable such as IBM's 2-conductor twinax were almost always proprietary terminals intended for one particular manufacturer or even model.

BTW, the connectors on the back of the Wang system look like normal serial ports...
 
MikeS said:
Hate to argue with ya, Ole, but...

Thinnet Ethernet coax (10base2) has an impedance of 50 ohms, e.g. RG8, RG58.

Cable TV, video, etc. normally uses 75 (not 70) ohm cable, e.g. RG6, RG59.
Click to expand...

No problem - I bow to your expertise. :) I'm talking through my hat. I'm pretty aware of cable impedances, but made a silly assumption based on the fact that I have a box of Arcnet cards with some cables that look just like the 75 ohm ones out of an old CBC video console lying next to them. Sorry - not good science. :( For that matter, I seem to recall something about the Arcnet terminators that I have saying 93 ohm. Since that seemed so odd I just did a Google right now and see that 93 ohm is RG62 which is apparently used in nuclear instrumentation, car antennas, and Arcnet - an odd group. (Makes a great trivia question!)

Anyway, why did the coax get mentioned in the first place since there don't seem to be any coax connectors in the pictures?
 
Ole Juul said:
Anyway, why did the coax get mentioned in the first place since there don't seem to be any coax connectors in the pictures?
Click to expand...
I didn't see any either so I was sorta asking the same question; by far the largest percentage of non-IBM terminals will have an RS-232 interface.

As it happens, I have a Falco TS-1SP terminal that has a BNC coax connector along with the usual DB-25s, but it is for use with an external 75 ohm video monitor or projector.
 
jonnymacuser said:
Here's a photo of the back of the WANG VS:

View attachment 8537

It looks like dual-coaxial cables, no? Or "twinax"?
Click to expand...

Found this on an old Wang fan site, from a thread about a salvaged VS terminal -

QUOTE:

From: kfoss@mint.net (Kevin A. Foss)
Subject: Re: Wang 4430

On 27 Oct 1997 10:38:07 GMT, Jason Parker <ph330812@student.uq.edu.au> wrote:
>
>It has a pair of what I /think/ are Ethernet connectors at the back,
>one is the normal socket push-and-turn affair, the other is a
>screw-in style plug.


Well, no, they aren't Ethernet plugs. Wang had its own networking system
which required the two plugs. At work we used to have a Wang VS before we
got our RS/6000 and all of the PCs required WLOC (Wang Local Office
Connection) cards to connect to the VS. They ran at near 9600bps speed, and
cards had plugs exactly as you describe. We ran a cable with the two ends
back to a Wang style hub that connected to the VS. You could do a couple
things like file transfers that made them mildly preferable to just using
a terminal emulator over a serial connection.

END QUOTE

Confirms the proprietary network thesis...
 
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